The operating budget, capital budget and tuition rates for the 2018 fiscal year were set Monday, July 17, at a joint meeting of the University of Pittsburgh Board of Trustees Budget and Executive Committees.

The operating budget, which includes investments in research. academic quality, diversity and inclusion, and economic development, has increased from $2.1 billion to $2.2 billion. The capital budget of $251.7 million will allow the University to renovate its properties and address deferred maintenance.

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Students from Pennsylvania attending the Pittsburgh campus will see a 2.5 percent increase in tuition. For example, students attending the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences will incur an increase of $442. Out-of-state enrollees' tuition at the Pittsburgh campus will increase by 3 percent, or for students of the Dietrich School, $864. Pennsylvania students at regional campuses, excluding Titusville, will pay an additional 2 percent, or approximately $252 for students of most majors. The tuition at the Titusville campus will not change.

Financial aid available to students will increase by the same percentage as tuition, helping limit the impact on students and their families, as has been the long-standing practice at Pitt.

"As always, our goal is to control cost while expanding opportunity for our students, our faculty and our community,” said University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Patrick Gallagher. “Our endowment returns are helping to mitigate the drastic effects of reduced state support and to keep tuition increases from being any greater."

A fundamental assumption in the budget approved today is that Pitt will be receiving an appropriation from the Commonwealth at a level equal to last year’s funding. The appropriation bills for the state-related universities, including Pitt’s, have not been approved pending continuing discussions on state revenues.

"Despite the continuing budget discussions in Harrisburg that affect Pitt, we felt that it was important to approve a final budget for next year and not pass along the uncertainty to our students and their families," Gallagher said.

Over the past year, the University expanded efforts to control costs while maintaining quality, including energy conservation initiatives, consolidation of University vendors to create savings by expanding purchasing power, and restructuring of debt to reduce interest payments.

"There is no other investment in the state portfolio that does more to boost the long-term vitality of the Commonwealth” than its research universities, Gallagher said.

Last year, the University’s research funding was $764.5 million.

In past years, every dollar invested in Pitt by the Commonwealth was calculated to return at least $3 in research dollars to the Commonwealth, largely from federal entities. Based on the most recent figure, the University is generating almost $5 of outside research funding per dollar of state money invested, based on the total Commonwealth appropriation of $158.9 million in FY 2017.